Sunday, October 25, 2015

i caught myself wondering what it will be like when i return home with honor inn two years at the airport. but i thought about my family a couple times this week especially when i ate dinner at a members house. their family reminded me of a younger version of ours. it was bittersweet. the people out here become family. the bishop in this ward is the most loving generous guy our there. and we have a family who were really tight with that left two huge care packages at our doorstep because we told them we were out of money haha but its all gone now and were still out of money. the mission funds are really hard to live on especially when we dont get fed by members very often. but i still love it here. i still love our apartment and the goofy neighbors we have and the gunshots we hear at night. i feel like im in a little safe bubble. and my badge is armor or something. but i love it and we have 3 people commited to baptism in november. we are kick butt missionaries.

This week has been fun! in the morning the sky is a warm welcome to a new day. I wake up every morning to a painting of blue, pink, and orange and stuff outside my window. I love it. I love being a missionary.

This week was zone conference. Its where all the missionaries in certain ares gather and we study and learn and people who leave bear departing testimonies. That part is sad. Anyway since were on bike, we got an award because we are tough and brave. At the zone conference we learned a lot of cool stuff! I took notes on everything i felt. We learned the importance of talking to everyone. The statistics say that 1 in every 1000 people we find tracting, will be baptized. Harsh truth. We learned that member involvement is crucial. Also i had a distinct feeling the whole time that i needed to go back the next day to a guy named Herald we knocked on his door my first day here. We went over. Herald is an atheist and thinks god is a crutch that man have. In casual conversation the opportunity presented itself to bear my testimony to him, remember hes very stubborn, old and hard headed. I very plainly stated my testimony of the living god and the truthfulness of the gospel, with such boldness i never thought i had. (which means it was the spirit speaking through me). After i bore my witness with confidence i was sure no man could deny such pure and powerful testimony. He had a weird reaction. Like he never felt the way he felt before. I could see it in his eyes. The spirit pricked his heart, he believed my words. But was too scared on unsure, to admit it. On the verge of tears with authentic love for him i stated that if we read this book (The book of Mormon) we cannot deny gods existence. Unfortunately the only thing we left with herald that day was our testimonies. Next time well try the book. But we are not here to plant seeds we are here to harvest. So herald is not a man we focus on. But who knows what thoughts we provoked in that conversation to him. The weird thing about Herald is i had a dream about him in the MTC. Only god knows why i was prompted to go visit him, Im just happy to be a tool in his hands.

Lots of other cool things happened this week. Like we are really worried because were only like halfway through the month and weve spent all our grocery money. But god has our back, so we pray to him. Guess what, prayer works. By no coincidence we had two hug boxes full of food brought to us out of the bluehaha. God Lives!, hears our prayers!, and answers them! Maybe not so immediately like food on your doorstep. But he will. I hope anyone who reads this feels the slightest bit of spirit i felt while writing it. This church is the only true church. I pray that we all will heed the prophets council and bring Gods sheep into the fold. This is my prayer. I hope all is well on the other side of the mountains. Keep me posted on your lives.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Reece Reynolds

Oct 13 (5 days ago)

to me

Hello everyone,

This week Ive learned a lot about myself and my potential again. Its limitless!! i love being here and i love everyone i see and meet I kinda understand in a small way how the savior felt as he lived and ministered to all gods children. I also understand the sadness he felt when people rejected him. ive learned patience along with that, to every 50 doors we knock 5 let us in. Out of those 5, 1 will become an investigator.

We have a zone conference coming up tomorrow, i get to see my companion from the mtc and everyone i came out with. im stoked itll be dope. we were given a talk by the zone leaders (who both think ill be a zone leader soon, which freaks me out because im still brand new) the talk was given by elder Bednar it was about the character of Christ and man it was just what i needed.

A few notes. God loves us so much we cant even comprehend, to prove that he sent jesus and to prove Jesus, we have the book of Mormon. Jesus was our supreme example. He knows EVERYTHING we have ever been through or are going through. Hes been there he knows what its like. How we can show our love for Jesus is by following his example and doing charity which is the pure love of Christ, kinda confusing. But he taught us to love and serve everyone through his example. Or turn outward. We learn that Christ was the most selfless person to live on the earth we know this because he turned outward his love and never allowed himself to feel self pity or pride. On the cross of his very Crucifixion, when you or i would be consumed by feelings of sadness or anger. he turned outward and told the thieve next to him "soon we will rest in paradise" and he pleaded with our father in heaven to "forgive them for they know not what they do". Jesus Christ is the person who we all should seek with every ounce of our essence to get to know and strengthen our relationship with. Because he knows what were going through, hes been there. So my goal for my mission is to turn outward. To those who might read this i challenge you to turn outward and focus on loving others.

Haha on a lighter note yesterday was PDAY we love those here in the Denver Colorado north mission. We went fishing! with a bunch of elders in my zone, Ive grown to love them as my family. One in particular I look up to a lot is Elder Rusick. He is the man. Hes from southern California and he surfs. unfortunately his work is almost done here in the mission field and he goes home in 2 weeks. Its really sad because were all a little jealous. He will probs be married by the time i get home. Anyway by watching him as a missionary i have learned what its like to fully embrace the work to which we are called. He carries a book of Mormon in his waistband when he goes to the grocery store. Anyway he was fishing with us and sang to us all afternoon his funny songs that hes made up since hes been on the mission. While we were fishing all the fish pretty much had been caught in this little lake, and i was bored, so i caught a big juicy grass hopper and put it on my hook. I casted it out and was like " hey guys i just put a grasshopper on my hook!" right as i said that, no joke my line tugged with great force! I caught the Big Mouth Billy Bass of the pond. He liked my grasshopper. He sang to me too! My Billy Bass sang an ear tickling song of the beautiful life he had as a pond fish in solace and how he wished he could go back. so i let him. Hahah after i threw him back i saw all the other elders looking for grasshoppers haha

hi mom i loved jeffrey r hollands talk. i had a big lump in my throat the whole time. all i wanted was a hug from my mom.

Couple things.

First HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZAN! your so big and its weird, hope you got my letter.

Next, this week has been so fun and interesting, conference was a great way to end it. I also hit my month mark! im 1, 24th of the way done haha.

Earlier this week we were riding to the church and my companion lost control of his bike and crashed into a bush and went straight into this monster of leaves that engulfed him i had to find him haha it was so funny im still laughing. We have so much fun on the bikes.

On Tuesday we went on exchanges so i spent the night at the zone leaders cave, it was different. I learned so much and i realized my potential. I also realized how much i love my companion because at the end of the day i missed him so much! So i was glad to get back with him.

On Wednesday we had a decision to make at about 6 in the evening. We could go to a members house and check on them or go to the food and grab our dinner and run it home real quick because we had leftovers from olive garden in the kitchen there. So i had a weird felling to go grab the food first, we did. and as we rolled up and started to walk in the church. An old gross jeep rolls into the parking lot and we hear "ELDERS!!" we turned around kinda startled and we found out that there was a couple who was being reactivated in the church, who drove a long ways to get to our building hoping someone would be there. They needed priesthood blessings. We can give priesthood blessings!! So on the cloudy afternoon we welcomed them into the building and they ran to the chapel and we were kinda worried. But turns out they needed to be there so badly and we gave them blessings. The husband wanted me to say his and his wife's. I was nervous because i had never met these people and didn't even know their names. I gave them a blessing and before, i was worried of what to say. When i began to speak i had no idea what i was doing, but some of the most beautiful words came out of my mouth, that weren't my words. The holy ghost was speaking through me. After the blessing i was excited because of the sacred spiritual experience i was just able to administer. The lord works in odd ways because i thought for sure it was more important to see the members we had planned to visit then get our food.

The rest of the week was pretty cool. We got a guy on date to be baptized. He just has to get over some family problems first.. But we are so excited for him and his path to return to live with our father in heaven. Also that we could be a part of it. Later, we talked to an older man in our ward who used to be a seventy. We learned so much. He used to be a member of the reformed church and he realized the truthfulness of the book of Mormon and how it came to pass. He was baptized 45 years ago and his spirit is so powerful we were edified from his testimony. He reminded me of one of my best friends back home who i pray about all the time.

Conference. It was weird not being surrounded by my sisters and snacks for the sessions but i loved it. Ive never been so excited to hear from the prophet. Although his body is deteriorating, his spirit is so strong just by thinking about him, my testimony grows. One of my favorite talks was given by Richard J Maynes. He mentioned a scripture in Alma and when he said it I was absolutely blown away because he quoted the exact scripture i read earlier in the morning for personal study. it stuck out to me so i highlighted it and what do you know? it was quoted later in the day at conference haha so dope. Then i loved the talk Jeffrey R Holland gave about mothers. The chapel only had missionaries in it and there wasn't a dry eye in there. All of the elders and sisters wanted to hear their mothers voice. I Realized how much my mom means to me and she has been the best example of Christ-like love that i can think of. Because Elder Holland parallels Christ-like love to the unconditional love of mothers.

We also got our money reloaded to our cards and we were so happy because we were hungry for a couple days so that was cool. We have the ability to buy food now haha. Today we got stuck in an elevator haha and we called 911 and we were in there forever just hungry and scared. But we made it fun. The three guys im with are the funnest guys i know. I love them and im sad because one of them is going home in a couple weeks.

I love being a Mormon on a bike sharing the gospel, and getting laughed at by members of the great and spacious building, who drive tricked out dodge neons lol. I love this mission and my testimony of the savior and his love of the church, is so strong. I pray that all the people i come in contact will notice the light in my countenance and desire to be like me and follow the saviors example by being baptized.

Until next week, my work is where my heart is.

Love, Elder Reynolds

The Elders got stuck in an elevator and called 911. They obviously were not too scared...the pulled out the selfie stick to capture the moment!

This week has been so great. Since were still new to the area we do a lot of tracting and working out of the outdated area book haha sheesh anywho. The ward we are working is has a lot of less actives so we do a lot of checkups which is good but i want to be great so we always ask for referalls to baptize haha. We also we to three hawaiin BBQs this week so hopefully im gaining weight.

We had a zone meeting this week and we learned a few things. We need to figure out what our barriers are and destroy them haha. In my companionship our barrier is that we dont pray as often as we should we still pray like 30 times a day. But i feel like if the elevator were in thats really old doesn't open fast enough. We should pray for it to open faster. Because its scary being in a ghetto apartment elevator that smells funky and you have to open it by pushing with your hands haha. Me and my comp work really well together though so other then that we have no barriers. We talk to anyone and EVERYONE we see because why not. Also the zone meeting was by the theater that the batman shooting happened at in Aurora and its a real nice place so its sad to think it has a dark past.

My companion and i have really deep talks. The other night his tire popped like 10 miles from our house so we walked and we ended up just having a huge bro talk and i loved it. I think we were best friends in heaven. We also talked about faith on the way home and how if we had enough faith we could probably work miracles like Jesus. For example if a handicapped lady was struggling with walking, and she had enough faith and stuff we could totally make her walk. Like we are serious missionaries. Representatives of the lord if you will.

We had a cool moment this week when we were lead to a lady. We were dropping of a Book of Mormon at some persons house and we were riding to a place for an appointment and we saw a ladie mowin her lawn and i told my companion. While i mow you talk. So we rolled up and i was like hey can i help you and she said no and i got off my bike and said we love to serve please let me help you. Long story short i was mowing the lawn and haha my companion slayed her with the restoration. Thats teamwork. She was interested and wants to learn more so maybe something will come from it i hope.

Last night we were on foot because my comp hadnt fixed his tire yet and we strolled past a latino family sitting on the porch and i said hey do you guys want to hear a message about familys and they said no thats ok. Anyway i bore my testimony to them and they looked way confused haha turns out none of them spoke english... akward haha we walked away and kinda laughed. But the church is true and i hope they felt the love for them i had as a spoke because thats all that really matters.

The church really is true and Jose Smith was a prophet of god. Im so excited to listen to our prophet this weekend who has the same priesthood that Joseph smith did. Im excited to see who will be the new apostles too.

WEEK ONE IN THE FIELD DOWN! I HAVE 23 MONTHS AND 1 WEEK LEFT!! haha jk so many awesome things have happened this week. i told my companion elder Arevalo that this mission thing is dope.

We started on foot on Wednesday and we met a TON! of weird people because were in the ghetto and marijuana is legal so those two mixed is sometimes really funny. we can smell the stank a lot haha But people live in really humble circumstances here and also non members are really prideful. the majority of humans in Denver, like 98 percent are catholic. so when we say hey do you want to talk about jesus, they go off about how yes they have seen him in revelations and hes their best friend. yeah its happened more then once. Back on Wednesday there was this door that had tons of do not disturb, no solicitors, go away stickers on it. and i just being rebelious wanted to see what would happen. so i knocked and this super mean grumpy half sleeping, half high dude opens the door. he was so mad we disturbed his silence. he said so with some very mean words when he started to come out the door. so for a moment i thought we had to make a decision, run or fight. my companion isn't very big scary or fast so i thought we were gonna have to fight. but i had a quick thought come to my head to ask this dude about his scar on his chest. he said it was from the days when he rode bulls. i proceeded to very timidly tell him i worked on a cattle ranch all summer and i had some fun stories too. his face just changed like i turned on a light somewhere. he told us he didnt believe in god and he thought god was just a way for people to get over the fact that we don't go anywhere after we die. long story short an hour and a half later we got this dude committed to baptism... jk but he wasnt the same dude who opened the door. We made a friend who we promised to never talk about Jesus with. We made him a deal that we would help him do yard work if he gave us lemonade and thats when were gonna slip in some doctrine. hehe

I GOT A BIKE!!! ALSO THERE'S A WALMART A BLOCK AWAY!!

my life is so perfect. This whole mission thing that ive though about for my whole life is here! my bike is so sweet i wish everyone could take it for a spin but no its mine. im so thankful for my family for doing that. We can go get rolls of quarters from Walmart for laundry anytime we want because i can ride there on it!! also theres a taco bell!!! im in heaven here. For morning workout the other day we went and played soccer with two other sets of elders in this super ghetto little field.. i thought my shoes were gonna get stolen off of me. It looked like we were in the heart of mexico haha. all these little juans and juanitas started watching us and It was real cool.

The only thing is we need more people to teach. when we find people they're definitely ready. My companion has been on the mission for a little over a year but hes new to the area as well so we both don't know anyone and so we try to tract a lot but its not successful all the time so we just keep going. The ward is so awesome the bishop is the sweetest old man out there. Yesterday i had to bare my testimony and i have a small cold from the mtc but i made everyone laugh and its was great but then i turned the subject and bore my testimony and the room was so quiet like the spirit was there and i loved it. needless to say we had a couple more dinners come up on the calendar after that.

I love it here and i can feel the prayers from everyone i look so forward to sharing my fun stories. I know this church out of all the hundreds of churches in Thornton Colorado, is the only true church. Regardless of what the asian philosopher we taught on friday said. But it is. God didn't tell me so himself, like some people say, but i have felt the holy ghost so strongly. I know what im doing brings honor to my family and its hard. but its right.

The night Elder Reynolds opened his call, we celebrated at the Blue Pig in Moab.

Beginning the SPENDING

Here is his first letter, handwritten to family upon arriving at the MTC dated Sept 7, 2015..(spelling and grammar have been preserved)

Dear Family, Things in the MTC are going well. I feel like im in the 50's or 60's or at war for writing a letter. I am learning a TON! So much that I can't comprehend it all. My heart is definitely being softened. My district is cool. My teacher and class are cool. My companion, however, is something else..haha. He has a joint disorder so he walks really really slow. Stairs are horrible. People get annoyed and pass us..haha but the branch presidents wife told me I was assigned to him for a reason. She said we walked into a meeting late with him, and felt the spirit...Anyway, hes super nerdy, tall skinny and redneck..haha..WHY..JK

I love him. and things are great. We have our own room with a splendid view of some grass. I am doing what right. Have faith..THE CHURCH IS TRUE!

Here is handwritten letter from Reece dated Sept 12, 2015 (The spelling and grammar has been preserved.)

Hi family, I am writing this at 5:30 am because I can't sleep and all our lessons are planned for the rest of the time we are here. Me and my companion work really well together but we don't connect really well on anything besides a spiritual basis. I did some digging on him and found out that he used to watch Spongebob! That made me happy to know he is at least somewhat normal..haha. Elder Metcalfe is sick though so we have been cooped up in this dorm for longer than I want to be. Ive though about the family back home a lot recently. I just want you to know I do not miss any of you at all..haha..but I do love you. Ive been thinking how much I wish all of you could hear these lessons. Theyre top secret though! So, Zan, serve a mission, especially Zan..I really think I am changing. I am never upset or disappointed because Ive been literally trying to be like Jesus. My companion has really helped me do that. Me and Elder M taught an investigator on Thursday. We've taught them before but this time we nailed it. We taught about the restoration. We didn't even use notes or books..just the Book of Mormon which is really cool. I love that book. It is really magical. It has the power to change peoples lives. Its changing mine. But anyway, while we taught I did most of the talking because Elder M isn't good at teaching yet. But the spirit was incredibly strong. It brought Josh the investigator who is Lutheran, to tears. Thats a good thing..haha. Its amazing how much I actually know about the gospel. However, I do wish I knew more. Good thing I have 2 years. The days are going by quickly especially because of how much fun our district has. During meal time I have all the Elders at my table laughing so hard. Haha..about the dumbest stuff. Thy also know they can just talk to me. People have come to me often times now, just to talk. Some kids really miss there girls and moms. So I just say its time to man up, we have work to do and that is

baptize people. They listen but it helps me too. Anyway, until next week. Love Elder Reynolds